Repositionable adhesive note papers, charts and posters are available commercially and provide a substantial volume of business. The adhesive utilized in many of these products is applied to a narrow band along the edge of one surface the repositionable sheets. Information relevant to adhesives used for these products can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,691,140 9/1972 to Silver, U.S. Pat. No. 3,857,731 12/1974 to Merrill, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,153,041 6/1992 to Clements et al. that describes a pressure sensitive adhesive comprising inherently tacky, elastomeric copolymer microspheres protruding from a binder. The narrow band of pressure sensitive adhesive must be applied to the edge of one surface of each sheet during the manufacturing process.
The binders for the pressure sensitive adhesive layer are often polymers that are soluble in solvents that are harmful to human health and to the environment. The manufacturing processes that uses these solvents employ safeguard to protect operators and machinery to capture the solvents before they are emitted to the environment. Even with state-of-the-art safeguards and solvent capture technologies, workers continue to be exposed to solvents and solvents continue to be emitted into our environment.
A common feature of pressure sensitive adhesive layers is that the layer on one surface of the note paper, chart or poster must physically touch the object to stick the sheet to the object. When the adhesive layer does not touch the object, the sheet does not stick to the object.
Commonly, the adhesive layer on one surface of a sheet will become contaminated with dust or paper fibers. Consequently, the sheet loses its ability to stick to objects after a few repeated uses.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a method to attract sheets to nearby objects while eliminating the use of solvents in the manufacturing process and so that the sheets are attracted to the object even when the sheets are simply near the object and do not touch the object.